SPACEMAN (2024) – Netflix Original Starring Adam Sandler An Introspective Science Fiction Tale of Loneliness and Hope

I’ll say one thing for Netflix. They continue to attract top star power for their original movies.

SPACEMAN (2024), their latest, which was just released this weekend, is a solitary science fiction tale featuring the likes of Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Isabella Rossellini, and Lena Olin. It’s not getting a lot of love from critics or moviegoers, but this one worked for me.

It’s the story of an astronaut Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler) on a solo mission into space to investigate a mysterious cosmic cloud which is travelling towards Earth, a mission which will keep him away from Earth for a year. And while he’s in constant radio contact with mission control on Earth, other than this, he’s alone.

He is, however, also able to speak by phone to his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Things are not going well between the two of them, as Lenka feels that Jakub no longer sees her and is too self-absorbed to appreciate her in any way shape or form. She records a voice message for him where she tells him she is leaving him. Since mission control monitors all communications with Jakub, they hear the message and intercept it, and the mission leader, Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini) decides that they will not send the message to Jakub.

But Jakub knows that something is wrong in their relationship, and in the solitariness of space, it’s weighing on his mind. And when he wakes up and hears strange noises inside the ship, he discovers a giant spider-like creature in the ship with him, a creature that starts talking to him in a calm, gentle voice. Of course, Jakub believes he is losing his mind and is imagining the creature, which tells him that it is not the case, that it is a space traveler like himself who has been studying humanity and he’s inside this ship to learn more about Jakub as he tries to understand human culture.

Eventually, Jakub stops resisting and engages in conversation with the spider creature, which he names Hanus (voiced by Paul Dano). While Hanus speaks to him about the nature of the cloud they are approaching, and that it contains information about the origins of the universe, in his inquiry of Jakub, he talks most about Jakub’s troubled relationship with his wife, and through shared images from Jakub’s memory, together they relive pivotal moments from Jakub’s past, especially regarding his relationship with Lenka. It’s a journey of self-discovery in which Jakub learns about the nature of his true self, as well as forming a close bond with Hanus, who may or may not be imagined.

It’s a fascinating story that I liked a lot.

It’s also a very slow-moving story. The pace is dreadfully slow, but since it’s a story about one man alone in a spaceship, the pacing really didn’t bother me all that much. Instead, it fit in perfectly with the movie’s solitary theme. But I can see how some folks might be turned off by such a lethargic pace.

The screenplay by Colby Day, based on the novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar, works because its primary tale of one man in space investigating an unknown cloud, and whether the spider creature in the ship is real or imaginary, is not the most important part of the story. What SPACEMAN is really about is Jakub learning about himself and why it is he’s always pushing people away and gravitating towards being alone. It’s a statement on the human condition and on what matters most in life, that as humans we really can’t go it alone. Ultimately this is why this movie worked so well for me. It’s a deeper story than most, and Jakub’s journey of self-discovery also ties into his investigation of the strange cloud, because ultimately as humans we are not only connected to each other, but also to everything else in the universe. We are all made from the same stuff, and we all have beginnings, and we all have endings.

It’s also not a pretentious story, nor is it preachy. It keeps its story elements simple, and as such, makes its points efficiently. It’s also refreshing that this is not a tale of American astronauts vs. Russian or Chinese astronauts. Instead, Jakub is from the Czech Republic, and the competing space mission which is trying to get to the cloud before him is from South Korea.

I have been enjoying Adam Sandler as a dramatic actor more than his years as a comedic one. While his performance here isn’t as inspired as his performance in UNCUT GEMS (2019), it’s still very good and much more satisfying than so many of his silly comedic roles for which he is famous. Here as Jakub, he spends most of the time looking like those of us of a certain age when we first wake up in the morning, which is to say, he ain’t looking too good!

Sandler delivers a quiet introspective performance that completely captures Jakub’s persona and allows the audience to get inside the character’s head to understand exactly what he is thinking and feeling, so when he makes discoveries about himself, we are right there with him.

I’m a huge fan of Carey Mulligan. She has wowed in such movies as SHE SAID (2022), THE DIG (2021), and PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (2020), to name just a few recent ones. Here, her role is much smaller than Sandler’s, and she is not on screen as much as he is, but she make a significant impact just the same. We understand completely how alone she feels as for years Jakub has not been giving her the time of day. And in her scenes with Sandler, which are viewed entirely in brief snippets of flashbacks, she channels considerable and effective anger towards his character.

In a smaller role, Isabella Rossellini makes full use of her limited screen time as Commissioner Tuma. The scene where Tuma visits Lenka to talk to her about her relationship with Jakub and why it is so important for them to take care of him right now is a wonderfully acted scene between Rossellini and Mulligan. In an even smaller role, Lena Olin plays Lenka’s mother and also makes considerable contributions to the story with her brief screen time.

And versatile actor Paul Dano does a terrific job as the voice of Hanus. The bond that grows between Hanus and Jakub is believable largely because of Dano’s voice acting. Indeed, the climactic scene where they embrace, a key moment in the movie, works because Dano has made this spider creature something far removed from its giant arachnid appearance.

Speaking of appearances, the look of Hanus is also credible, as the CGI here is decent.

Director Johan Renck keeps the story tight, and at a modest one hour and forty-seven-minute running time, the slow pace is tolerable. He also captures the claustrophobic and solitary feel of being alone on a spaceship for so long and succeeds in telling Jakub’s and Lenka’s story even though we only see them together in brief and incomplete flashbacks.

SPACEMAN is a successful science fiction movie that tells a tale of the human condition and does so by connecting humanity to the celestial bodies of the universe, which allows one man to learn something about himself that he was unable to see while he was living on Earth.

It’s slow-paced to be sure, but don’t let that deter you from trekking along with Jakub on his solitary voyage of self-discovery. SPACEMAN is a tale of loneliness and hope that is well worth your time.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

FOE (2023) – Thought-Provoking Science Fiction Tale Also Slow and Laborious

Sometimes a movie just isn’t as good as the ideas it presents.

FOE (2023), a new science fiction movie released on Prime Video this weekend after a limited theatrical premiere in November, is such a movie.

I had wanted to see FOE when it first came out because it stars one of my favorite actors, Saoirse Ronan, but it had such a small release it never played near me.

It tells a fascinating story. Make no mistake, the ideas and themes in this film are really thought-provoking, but the unfolding of the narrative is so slow and laborious, even though it’s by design, and you realize this when you get to the end of the movie, it doesn’t make the snail’s pace any more agreeable. In short, I appreciated the themes in this one, but I can’t say I enjoyed the movie all that much.

FOE takes place in the not-too-distant future of 2065, when Earth’s resources are running out and governments are pushing to move its citizens to new habitats off the planet. A young married couple, Hen (Saiorse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal) live on a farm isolated from civilization. When the movie opens, their marriage is in trouble. Hen feels like Junior no longer sees her, and she feels the things that brought them together hardly matter anymore.

One night, a stranger arrives at their door, Terrance (Aaron Pierre) who identifies himself as a representative from the government. He is there to share with them what he calls is an exciting proposition. The government has created a space station on which it hopes people will move to and live. In the meantime, they need people with a certain set of skills to go to the station for a number of years to make it operational. Terrance explains that the government is using conscription to get the people it needs, and Junior has been chosen to be on the team.

Both Junior and Hen push back against the idea that Junior will be off working in space for a number of years, but things get stranger when Terrance says the government does not want to leave Hen alone for all this time, so… they are creating an AI robot version of Junior to be a companion for Hen while Junior is off in space. While this may sound like a ridiculous idea, in the move, Terrance is dead serious and explains it all in matter-of-fact language. Terrance also says he will need to move in with them to learn as much about their day to day lives as possible, so the AI replacement will be as close to the real Junior in both its understanding of itself and of Junior’s relationship with Hen.

And this is what the bulk of this very slow-paced movie is all about. Terrance observing the already troubled marriage between Hen and Junior, which becomes even more troubled when Junior notices that Hen is not protesting as much as he expects at his leaving. Much of this part of the movie unfolds in almost dreamlike fashion, as scenes aren’t always explained clearly, and the dialogue is cryptic.

Throughout you get the idea that something isn’t right, which is also by design, as there is a twist later in the movie, which if you’re a careful viewer, you will see coming. I did, but that didn’t really ruin it for me. It just made the story that much more fascinating. What it didn’t do was help with the slow rather mundane pacing which made this one difficult to get through.

That being said, there’s a lot going on here. The screenplay by director Garth Davis, based on the novel of the same name by Iain Reid, tackles among other things what happens when an AI being develops affections for humans, and vice versa, when humans develop feelings for artificial beings, as well as what responsibilities governments have in using these AI beings, and how AI beings can theoretically help improve relationships.

While I didn’t like the pacing of FOE, I did like the serious way it handled its subject matter. As outlandish as some of its ideas seem, it treats them with a sincerity that allows them to be believed. Well, almost!

I’m a huge fan of the work of Saoirse Ronan. I loved her performances in LITTLE WOMEN (2019) and LADY BIRD (2017). Here, as Hen, she delivers a complicated performance. Hen’s marriage is in trouble. She still loves her husband, but she is incredibly unhappy. Through the events of this story, she learns things about herself and Junior that affect her future actions. She also gets one of the best moments in this movie, in the movie’s most emotional scene, when she expresses absolute outrage over a dramatic action taken by Terrance.

I also enjoyed Paul Mescal as Junior. He loves his wife, but he’s completely blind to her needs. Junior’s journey in this one is the central and ultimately most important part of this story, and Mescal successfully navigates this frustrated character through this painful story arc.

Aaron Pierre is perfect as the calm, smooth-talking government official Terrance. For most of the movie, he’s a mysterious and frustrating enigma.

Director Garth Davis, known for directing the Oscar-nominated movie LION (2016), a film I enjoyed more than FOE, does a really good job here of capturing the frustration felt by Hen and Junior. The film plays out like a quiet nightmare for these two characters who are not having an easy time of it, and things grow more uncomfortable when they are put under the microscope of their government houseguest Terrance. They also have to deal with the knowledge that Junior will leave home for over a year, and he will be replaced with an artificial intelligent being that will be his exact likeness.

Davis captures all of this. Unfortunately, for such a troubled tale, it’s not very emotional at all, and other than one major climactic scene late in the movie, this one moves slowly and methodically. If you like movies that play out like logic puzzles, you’ll enjoy this one more than most. Because that’s kinda how this one unfolds.

It’s thought-provoking science fiction to be sure, but it’s not cinematic science fiction. It works more on a literary level than a cinematic one, which matters because FOE is a movie, and at the end of the day if it doesn’t entirely work as a movie, that’s not a good thing.

Why is it called FOE? Like other points in the movie, the answer to that question is also cryptic. Who is the foe here? Terrance? Junior? Hen? Humanity? You have to think about it. The ending also requires some thinking, but it’s not too difficult to figure out. And while I like movies that get you to think, I also like movies that make you feel things, which FOE struggles to do.

As such, I give FOE two and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE (2023) – Zach Snyder’s Star Wars Knock Off in Spite of Ridiculous Title Fairly Engrossing

I’m not a big fan of Zach Snyder’s work.

That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed some of his movies. I liked WATCHMEN (2009) and the bizarre but visually striking actioner SUCKER PUNCH (2011). MAN OF STEEL (2013) was okay, but I did not like the over-indulgent BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016) or JUSTICE LEAGUE (2017).

All this being said, the trailer for his latest movie, REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE (2023), made it look fairly interesting and a heck of a lot better than the god-awful trailer for James Wan’s Aquaman sequel AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM (2023), which made me not want to see it at all. At least not at a movie theater where it opened this weekend. The dialogue in the AQUAMAN trailer alone was so trite and cliche it nearly induced nausea. I’ve also had my fill of superhero movies. Unless they look exceptional, I’ll be taking a pass.

Speaking of movie theaters, REBEL MOON is also a Netflix original, meaning during this very busy and expensive time of year known as the Christmas season, I could watch the movie from the comfort of my home and save some money in the process, which is what I did, choosing to watch REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE, in spite of its long and ridiculous title, instead of trekking to the theater to see AQUAMAN 2.

REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE was originally pitched by Zach Snyder to George Lucas to be part of the STAR WARS franchise. Snyder wanted to make an R-rated STAR WARS movie. The project was never greenlighted, and I can’t imagine Disney/Star Wars folks were all too keen about an R-rated installment. The story here in REBEL MOON has R rating written all over it, yet ironically, strangely, and sadly, the film is rated PG-13, which works against the movie since there are some dark things happening in this story, but they’re all watered down.

It’s the story of yet another group of rebels taking on a much more powerful empire led by bullies and wannabe dictators. I’m actually glad this wasn’t a STAR WARS movie, because the STAR WARS universe tends to repeat this same story over and over again, the little guy vs. the all-powerful empire. It’s been done to death.

Still, David vs. Goliath stories on their own are usually fun. I mean, who doesn’t want to root for the little guy who is fighting for justice and survival?

Here, as the movie’s title suggests, it’s a peaceful farming community on a moon that is threatened by the all-powerful militant empire who arrive and in a scene which could have been lifted from the Negan days of THE WALKING DEAD (2010-2022) promptly land on the moon, murder the farmers’ leader in public, and announce that they will be back in a few months to collect all their harvest; in short, they’re taking everything. The evil leader, Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) looks and acts like he’s a Nazi from outer space. He’s sufficiently icy cold and villainous and channels a Cillian Murphy vibe throughout, especially if you’ve seen Murphy in PEAKY BLINDERS (2013-2022).

The dastardly Noble leaves a small force of evil soldiers behind to keep the farmers in line, and they promptly get busy in the pillaging and raping department, but before they can get very far, a young woman Kora (Sofia Boutella) steps up and single-handedly takes out the militant bad guys. It turns out, that Kora used to be a soldier of high rank, even becoming the personal protector of the young princess, but she became disillusioned with the evil empire and deserted their ranks, settling in with the moon’s farming community to start a new life.

Kora tells the farmers that their only chance of escaping the empire is for them to fight, and to fight, they will need an army, or at least some warriors. So, she and fellow farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) set out to find some. With the help of an opportunistic pilot named Kai (Charlie Hunnam) they travel around space assembling their team of warriors who hate the empire, a team of folks with such names as Tarak (Staz Nair), Nemesis (Bae Doona), Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher), and General Titus (Djimon Hounsou).

Hmm, a group of a warriors who assemble to protect a peaceful group of farmers from a band of outlaws? If this sounds to you like the plot of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) (2016), you’re right! Snyder said this story was influenced by SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) which was the source material on which THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was based.

Which brings me to one of the biggest flaws of REBEL MOON. Now, with PART ONE in its title, this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, but still… imagine if you will, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN with its story of the seven training and protecting the farmers, and then the much-anticipated confrontation with the bad guys where the seven and the farmers make their stand… never happens, because you have to wait until part two! I don’t think you’d have much of a movie.

Well, that’s kinda what happens here. Oh, there’s a confrontation all right, but it happens before the assembled warriors get to the moon. One of the characters afterwards even says, “Gee, it’s too bad we didn’t get to fight for the farmers.”

You think?

I expected the PART ONE in the title to be a problem, but not like this! You’re going to have to wait until PART TWO to see THAT part of the story, I guess.

Anyway, believe it or not, REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE really wasn’t all that bad. Its story, in spite of the aforementioned flaw, generally entertains, especially during the first half. The movie has a strong start, and the early scenes when the militants first descend upon the farming community are intense. These are the sequences that would have been even better had this been an R-rated movie, as it would have better set the stage for the second half of the film.

The second half isn’t as good, as its mix of STAR WARS tropes with THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN storyline is mediocre and then suffers a huge blow when the movie ends before these warriors even get to defend the people they set out to protect.

The visuals are also really good. Zach Snyder’s space/fantasy cinematography is pretty darn good. There are some visually stunning shots, and the battle action is all expertly handled, and while it’s certainly not brief, the action doesn’t go on forever either.

The cast is really good. Sofia Boutella makes for an intriguing lead with her performance as Kora, the woman who knows firsthand the true evil of what they are facing. She’s also convincing as a kick ass warrior. While Boutella had the misfortune of playing the female mummy in the deplorable Tom Cruise movie THE MUMMY (2017), she also starred in ATOMIC BLONDE (2017) and HOTEL ARTEMIS (2018) where she fared much better.

I like Michiel Huisman a lot. He gave excellent performances in the underrated horror movie THE INVITATION (2015) and on the Netflix TV show THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018). Here, he makes for a believable and sincere green farmer Gunnar.

As I said, Ed Skrein makes for a despicable villain as Atticus Noble. He’s chilling throughout, even as he plays a character who is nothing more than a cliched World War II Nazi villain placed in an outer space adventure.

Charlie Hunnam is fun as the self-serving space pilot Kai. While Hunnam has been respectable in a number of movies, my favorite Hunnam role remains motorcycle gang member Jax Teller on the TV series SONS OF ANARCHY (2008-2014).

Sadly, Djimon Hounsou is largely wasted as General Titus, as he gets very little screen time. In fact, none of the “warriors” in this one ever really get to do much. They each have an introduction sequence, but that’s about it. And in the most ridiculous piece of casting, Anthony Hopkins voices a droid. What makes this so ridiculous is the droid’s name is… Jimmy. So, in the end credits, we get to see: And Anthony Hopkins as the voice of “Jimmy.” Why stop there? Let’s go with Ian McKellen as the voice of “Billy.” And Patrick Stewart as “Bob.”

The screenplay by Zach Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Shay Hatten is okay. The dialogue throughout isn’t bad, and the characters in spite of being generic STAR WARS wannabes, are fairly interesting. Likewise, while the story is nothing new, its David vs. Goliath plot is generally captivating. The weakest part of the screenplay, as one would expect by the movie’s title, is that it ends halfway through the story.

That being said, REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE could have been a heck of a lot worse. In terms of STAR WARS movies, I liked it better than SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018) but not as much as ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016).

And better yet, it didn’t make me regret my decision not to go see AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM.

As such, I give REBEL MOON: PART ONE – A CHILD OF FIRE two and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE CREATOR (2023) – Science Fiction Tale of War Between A.I. and Humans Far Less Sophisticated than A.I. Child it Features

THE CREATOR (2023), a new science fiction movie about a war between humans and A.I. in the near future, is a mix of opposites which don’t really gel all that well.

On the one hand, it tries to tell a deep story about A.I.’s place in the world, but this story is juxtaposed with a trite one where the American military, clearly the villains in this movie, speak in cliches and dialogue that sounds like they should all be wearing black hats and curly mustaches with a name tag that reads “Villain.” Then there are beautiful, magnificent, and oftentimes frightening images of enormous flying military crafts amidst Asian mountains and horizons, cinematography which calls to mind Neill Blomkamp’s DISTRICT 9 (2009), but these images play bookends to dull and all too often long scenes of military vs. A.I. combat that is anything but exciting.

The result is a mixed bag of a movie that because of the grandness of its scope feels all the more disappointing because it doesn’t quite deliver on what it promises, a cautionary science fiction tale about the dangers of A.I. Its ultimate message is actually that the future is not in danger because of A.I., but because of humans, as the human race continues to be the constant threat that puts this world in danger. This works as a theme and is one I have no problem with, but because it is so poorly executed, it ultimately doesn’t really resonate all that well.

THE CREATOR was written and directed by Gareth Edwards, who also directed ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016), one of the best of the recent STAR WARS movie. Indeed, ROGUE ONE has been Edwards’ best movie to date. Before that, Edwards helmed GODZILLA (2014) and MONSTERS (2010), two films I did not particularly like, even though MONSTERS was generally well-received. Both films I thought struggled with their narrative style which tended to get in the way of the storytelling. Edwards runs into the same problem here with THE CREATOR.

The story opens in 2065 where we learn that A.I. technology detonated a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, and since that time, the United States has declared war on A.I., which has found sanctuary in New Asia, since that culture has embraced A.I. Yep, the U.S. has declared war on A.I. Not on any country or terrorist group, but just A.I. While this idea is consistent with something the American government would do, to speak about it in such trite generalities minimalizes its effectiveness. It sounds like having declared war on … computers. Or on smart phones. It’s also interesting to note that the story pretty much completely bypasses the U.S. government. It’s as if the military is running the country, which without any back story, doesn’t ring true.

Anyway, undercover agent Joshua (John David Washington) has infiltrated an Asian village that is sympathetic to A.I. and is very close to learning the identity of their leader. He has even married the very beautiful Maya (Gemma Chan) who is pregnant with their child. But true to form, the American military raids the village before Joshua completes his mission, and in the ensuing attack, Maya is killed.

Several years later, the military again reaches out to Joshua, because they are trying to locate the ultimate secret weapon developed by the A.I. which will turn the tide and win the war for the A.I., and it’s supposedly near the village where Joshua had been working undercover, so he is very familiar with the area. After Joshua tells them what they can do with their offer, they inform him— and show him through video footage— that his wife is still alive, and that if he promises to help them, they will help him bring her back. Not a particularly original plot point, as I have seen this done in other movies in recent years, and had Joshua seen these same movies, he would have understood that he was being played.

Anyway, Joshua agrees, and in the ensuing raid, he does indeed locate the A.I.’s secret weapon, a child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), which he doesn’t kill but instead takes her with him to help him locate Maya on his own. The adventure which follows makes up the rest of the movie, with Joshua and Alphie running from the military, while learning more about each other, along with some truths about the real nature of the war between the A.I. and the humans, but none of it is all that awe-inspiring or thought-provoking. In fact, once you remove all the bells and whistles of the futuristic science fiction imagery, it’s all rather mundane.

It’s also much harder to follow than it has any right to be. It’s not a complicated story, yet Edwards’ direction is choppy and all over the place. It gets in the way of the storytelling. A lot. Characters come and go without any fanfare, and so not only is it difficult knowing who is who, or why they are doing what they are doing, they’re all so uninteresting you won’t even care.

The battle sequences are particularly bad. Plus they are always the same. The A.I. have a ton of robots on the ground, but once the American military swoops in, they wipe the floor with them. The A.I. are about as effective as the clueless Stormtroopers in the STAR WARS movies. Speaking of STAR WARS, the friendship that grows between Joshua and Alphie takes on a similar but much less successful vibe as the one shared by the Mandalorian and Grogu on THE MANDALORIAN (2019-2023). Alphie kinda becomes Joshua’s own personal little Grogu, bailing him out of jams as she uses her “special” powers.

And I guess East Asia is a sort of a futuristic China? Regardless, they must have all become pacifists, because there’s no East Asian military in sight. You’d think that if this nation bought into and supported A.I. they wouldn’t simply allow the U.S. military easy and open access into their country. It’s just another example of writing here that doesn’t really concern itself with details. The screenplay was co-written by director Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz.

John David Washington does deliver a bang-up performance as Joshua in the lead role. He pours his heart out in a plethora of emotions, most of them angst, as he deals with the loss of his wife and then the protection of this child, which tugs at his heartstrings. But he’s not supported by a strong story, and so while his performance is one of the best parts of the movie, it’s largely wasted, because the movie itself isn’t all that great. I enjoy Washington a lot. He was really good in AMSTERDAM (2022) and BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018). Washington is the son of Denzel Washington, and I think one of my favorite parts about John David Washington as an actor is that he doesn’t remind me at all of his father Denzel. He has his own distinctive style, and it works.

Madeleine Yuna Voyles is good as young Alphie, but ultimately, the character herself is somewhat of a disappointment. She’s the A.I.’s secret weapon. The Americans believe that she has been created to destroy their secret weapon and ultimately win the war, but the truth is she seems to have been created to teach love to humanity. Which sounds similar to the origins of Christianity, but the movie is simply not interested in getting that deep or philosophical. This isn’t a visionary story about the evolution of A.I. and how it becomes the next dominant race on Earth by teaching about love. The film hints at these things, but it’s simply too muddled to go anywhere with it.

Allison Janney is wasted in a terrible role at the hardnosed Colonel Howell. Everything she says is a military cliche. She looks and acts like she walked off the set of an AVATAR movie. She just wants to kill the enemy. Often in the cruelest and most heartless of ways.

THE CREATOR has an intriguing take on A.I. that in the future, it’s not A.I. that is the danger to the world, but humans. However, the script simplifies nearly every point it tries to make, and so at the end of the day, this idea seems like nothing more than an afterthought in a children’s cartoon. As a science fiction movie, it is nowhere near as thought-provoking as films like ARRIVAL (2016) or EX MACHINA (2014). However, it is significantly better than the 65 (2023) which crashed and burned on our screens earlier this year.

Visually, THE CREATOR has its moments, and if features an emotional performance by John David Washington in the lead role, but it can’t get out of its own way when it comes to storytelling. It’s like a clumsy child first learning to walk, stumbling and tumbling along without a care in the world, which is so unlike Alphie, the sophisticatedly intelligent and powerful A.I. child in this one, who seems to have important things to say here, if only the movie gave her a chance to say them.

I give it two and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

JULES (2023) – Science Fiction Comedy of UFO Landing in Elderly Man’s Backyard Is Quirky and Delightful

If you enjoy pleasant little movies with just a touch of science fiction and a splash of comedic quirkiness, chances are you’ll enjoy JULES (2023), a new comedy drama starring Ben Kingsley as an elderly man living alone in small town Pennsylvania who’s showing signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s when a UFO lands in his backyard and from the ship a child-sized alien emerges.

I know I sure did.

In JULES, Milton Robinson (Ben Kingsley) walks to his town hall each week and makes the same requests, that their town’s logo be changed, because he finds it too confusing, and for a crosswalk to be added to a dangerous intersection. The mayor and town councilmen listen in silence. His adult daughter visits him regularly to help him pay his bills and keep his life in order, and she’s worried about him because she’s noticed his memory is failing and he’s putting things where they don’t belong. Milton pushes back and tells her he’s fine, but silently he knows what is happening to him and dreads it.

His adult son lives on the west coast and doesn’t speak with his dad, because as Milton tells it, he wasn’t a very good dad and wasn’t always there for his son. But he continually tries to call his son to reestablish ties, but his son never responds, something which hurts Milton very much.

One night, he hears a crash and when he goes outside he sees that a spaceship has landed in his backyard. Panicked, he calls 911, but the operator thinks he’s making a crank call. At the town hall, he casually adds to his usual list of issues that there’s a UFO in his backyard, and of course the councilmen dismiss his claims as the imaginary workings of an old man’s mind.

Later, Milton finds the body of a small alien lying outside the spaceship, and he seems to be injured. Not knowing what else to do, he leaves a glass of water out for the alien, who eventually drinks it. Milton then offers a variety of foods to the alien and discovers that the being has a fondness for sliced apples. Milton invites the alien, who doesn’t speak, into his home, and he finds the extraterrestrial to be a patient listener. So, Milton, who lives alone, finds talking to the alien a pleasant and rewarding experience.

Eventually, two of Milton’s friends, Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) and Joyce (Jane Curtin), who also each live alone, visit Milton and are let in on the secret, and Sandy is the one who gives the silent alien a name, Jules. Like Milton, they very much enjoy talking to a being who seems only too happy to listen to them. Things continue this way for a while, until government officials who know a UFO has crash landed in the area, get a lead that it may have crashed in Milton’s yard, and at this point, things change.

But JULES is not a science fiction thriller. It’s a very enjoyable comedy drama about three elderly people’s friendship with a silent being. It’s a gentle tale, in which these three folks by having a silent listener learn things about themselves and each other.

JULES is also a lot of fun. The screenplay by Gavin Steckler is full of both comedic and heartwarming moments. The scene where Milton tries to tell the town council about the UFO in his backyard is a laugh-out-loud moment, and later when Jules intervenes and protects Sandy from a thief who is about to kill her, it’s a spot-on emotional moment. A short time later, it’s back to comedy when Sandy honestly has no idea how the head of the man attacking her simply exploded, and she relays this ignorance to the disbelieving police.

The best comedy really is the banter between the three players, Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, and Jane Curtin. Their conversations are flat out funny, and all three of these actors deliver top performances. It was fun to watch Ben Kingsley play a comedic role with an undercurrent of seriousness. Milton knows what’s happening to him cognitively, and it’s sad and tragic, and Kingsley captures this perfectly. The last time I saw Kingsley, he was playing the silly role of Trevor Slattery in Marvel’s SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS (2021). Before that it was in the serious and dark OPERATION FINALE (2018). Kingsley is always excellent, and here he plays a role that is wonderfully enjoyable.

Harriet Sansom Harris is also excellent as Sandy, and she enjoys many key moments. It was also a lot of fun to see Jane Curtin on the big screen again. While she has been working steadily in both movies and television, I hadn’t seen her in a movie since her supporting role in the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy comedy THE HEAT (2013).

JULES was directed by Marc Turtletaub, who gives this one a healthy balance of quirky comedy and heartfelt drama. It also, in spite of it being a story about an alien from space, rings true throughout. Ben Kingsley as Milton is a man who know his time on Earth is almost over, but he also knows there are still things he wants to do before that time comes.

The creation of Jules, the alien, involved no CGI, by the way. A prosthetic head and body were used, and actress Jade Quon played the silent Jules.

I really enjoyed JULES. Like the best science fiction, it has a lot to say about being human, especially in our twilight years.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

65 (2023) – Adam Driver Dinosaur Adventure Dead on Arrival

65 (2023), a new science fiction adventure starring Adam Driver as a space pilot who crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago smack in the middle of some menacing dinosaurs, has a fun premise, but then does nothing with it.

At all.

65 is the story of Mills (Adam Driver), a pilot who is about to leave on a two-year mission which will pay him well, money he needs to treat his ailing daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). But enroute, the ship is struck by a meteor and crash lands on an unknown planet, which happens to be Earth in the age of the dinosaurs. There is only one other survivor besides Mills, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), and so, thinking of his own daughter, Mills vows to get her back home. The specifics of that endeavor include climbing a mountain to reach the ship’s escape pod, which is on the mountaintop because Mills’ ship split in two and that’s where the half with the pod landed. In their way, a jungle filled with hungry dinosaurs.

And oh, by the way. This is also the day when the catastrophic meteor strike which wiped out the dinosaurs is about to occur. So, if Mills and Koa don’t get off the planet, they will be pulverized by the doomsday meteor blast.

There are a lot of thought-provoking roads this movie could have taken. Sadly, however, there just isn’t much that is thought-provoking about this film.

Let’s start with the characters. Mills and his people come from a planet different than Earth, and yet they all look human, and they speak English. But they are about to crash land on Earth during a time before humans existed, and so, I thought, might there be some PROMETHEUS (2012) ideas floating around, that perhaps these folks would somehow become the parents of the human race? But that’s not what this movie is about. And I know, in the STAR WARS universe, they look human too, but STAR WARS is also more fantasy/adventure than science fiction. So, why is it worse here in 65 than in the STAR WARS movies? It’s not. It’s just that in a standalone film about aliens who crash land on Earth who look and act exactly like humans, well that stands out a little more here, and not in a good way.

The screenplay by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, both of whom also directed the movie, struggles from the outset with this exciting premise. The plot here seems like a no brainer for suspense and excitement, yet the film labors to generate any, especially at the beginning. The ship crashes, and Mills is alone for a while trying to figure out what happened, and all I could think about is, we the audience know what happened: they crashed on Earth in a place full of dinosaurs! Had this ship contained a group of people who were alive, we could see them all dealing with these dinosaurs immediately! Instead, the script makes the dubious decision to kill everyone on board in the crash, except for Mills (and then later Koa when he discovers her alive), and so when Mills looks about the jungle, you know he’s not going to be killed because the movie would then be over after about ten minutes, and so there’s no suspense and no excitement.

The screenplay also struggles with time. At the beginning of the movie, it’s stated that Mills will be gone for two years. Yet, on the trip, everyone is in stasis, which seems odd for a mission that will have them back home in two years. It’s not like they’re traveling for decades. But I can buy that perhaps they were saving on food and other things, so it would make sense for them to be asleep for the voyage. However, after the crash Mills learns news about his daughter, and while it’s not specifically stated, it just seems like more than two years have passed since he left.

The movie also employs some of what I like to call LOST IN SPACE logic. Now, I love the original 1960s science fiction TV show LOST IN SPACE (1965-68) and I’m a big fan, but the logic on that show was always silly, and science was never at the forefront of their scripts, unlike STAR TREK. Here, you have Mills sending out distress calls to his home planet, and he seems to believe they will send help immediately. One, he’s on an uncharted planet, so they don’t even know where it is, and two, he must be far from home. What kind of ships do they have? Can they navigate worm holes? Does he really expect them to just show up and rescue them? Apparently, he does. Which makes little sense.

Then, he believes that the escape pod/ship will save them. Yes, it will get them off the planet, but then what? What about fuel? Food? And where are they going to go once they’re flying in space? No one here is asking these questions. It’s all very lazy writing.

The movie isn’t interested in any of these things, but it is interested in dinosaurs. So, how are the dinosaurs in this movie? Not bad. There are some decent sequences here, my favorite involving a T-Rex towards the end of the movie. But a lot of the scenes are derivative of stuff we’ve already seen in the JURASSIC PARK movies. In short, the dinosaurs here are decent, but they don’t make or break this movie.

Screenwriters Beck and Woods also worked on the screenplays for THE QUIET PLACE movies, which told much better stories than the one told here in 65. THE QUIET PLACE movies took an interesting premise and ran with it. 65 takes a neat premise and drops the ball.

The acting, however, is fine. Adam Driver is really good as Mills, and he turns in an athletic, driven performance as he will stop at nothing to get Koa home. Driver’s performance, as expected, is one of the better parts of the movie.

Ariana Greenblatt is also excellent as Koa, but the sad truth is there’s not a whole lot for either of these two actors to do other than react to scary dinosaurs.

My favorite part of 65 is that they used the same sound effects from the Martian machines in the classic 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS for Mills’ ship’s warning system. It was fun to hear it on the big screen, even if only for a few seconds.

65 is pure fluff, but not very thought-provoking or exciting fluff. Its tale of dinosaurs attacking people who have crash-landed on Earth 65 million years ago could have been intense and exciting, but it’s not. It’s superficial and sadly mediocre.

But because I like dinosaurs… and who doesn’t?… I give it two stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

SPUTNIK (2020) – Science Fiction Horror At Its Best

Few folks would disagree that 2020 has been a rough year, but one bright spot is it has produced a steady stream of very good horror movies.

You can go ahead and add SPUTNIK (2020) to the list, a very effective horror science fiction film which hails from Estonia and takes place in the Soviet Union in 1983.

When a Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth, one cosmonaut is found dead, the other bloodied and disoriented. Colonel Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) calls in psychologist Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) to help evaluate the condition of the surviving cosmonaut, Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov). What they discover is that there is an alien creature living inside Veshnyakov that emerges from his body at night only to return a short time later. It needs Veshnyakov’s body to survive in its new environment, and by living inside its host, it has developed a symbiotic relationship, one where Veshnyakov can no longer survive without it.

The less said about the plot of SPUTNIK,  the better, as one of the best parts of this movie is its thought-provoking script by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev. It tells a compelling story which scores high on the suspense meter, delves into science fiction themes revolving around alien life forms, covers Soviet era Cold War suspense, and manages to encompass the theme of abandonment, of how we all need someone else to survive in this world. After all, the word Sputnik, while the name of the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, launched by the Soviet Union, also means “companion” in Russian.

In terms of tone and feel, SPUTNIK has more in common with films like EX MACHINA (2014) and ARRIVAL (2016) than it does with the ALIEN movies.

That being said, the actual alien in this one is pretty cool looking. It reminded me of a miniature version of the monster from CLOVERFIELD (2008). The special effects here are excellent, and the creature looks creepy and real.

Director Egor Abramenko keeps the thrills tight and builds suspense throughout. There are some genuinely horrific scenes in this one, as well as plenty of low key thought-provoking moments of intrigue.

The cast is superb. Oksana Akinshina leads the way as psychologist Tatyana Klimova. Akinshina’s performance carries the movie. Tatyana is more than up to the task of standing up to the Soviet military, personified here by Colonel Semiradov, but she becomes more vulnerable as she grows closer to her subject, cosmonaut Konstantin. She also has some really cool scenes where she attempts to communicate with the alien creature.

Likewise, Fedor Bondarchuk is excellent as Colonel Semiradov, the military man who sells himself to Tatyana as a man independent of his superiors, but in reality is most interested in the alien for its potential use as a weapon.

And Pyotr Fyodorov is also very good as cosmonaut Konstantin Veshnyakov, a man who believes himself a hero but is also pained by choices he has made in his personal life. And what he knows about the alien inside him also makes him yet another intriguing aspect to this story.

The fourth principal character in this movie is Yan Rigel, an eminent Soviet scientist who at first is jealous of Tatyana’s involvement in the investigation, and he’s well played by Anton Vasilev. Rigel eventually becomes a sympathetic character, and Vasilev keeps the changes this character undergoes believable throughout.

SPUTNIK also features a strong music score by Oleg Karpachev, which really adds a lot to the movie and further enhances its uneasy mood.

I really liked SPUTNIK, and it’s one of my favorite movies of the year so far. In terms of enjoyable horror movies from 2020, SPUTNIK joins the likes of THE INVISIBLE MAN, UNDERWATER,  THE RENTAL, WE SUMMON  THE DARKNESS, THE WRETCHED, and RELIC, all 2020 releases, all really good horror movies.

If you’re looking for a thought-provoking science fiction film, one that mixes its cerebral themes with emotional ones, plus adds some genuine horror and suspense to the mix, then look no further than SPUTNIK.

It’s science fiction horror at its best.

—END—

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROJECT POWER (2020) – Pill Popping Superhero Tale Mildly Diverting

A superhero movie where the superheroes need to pop a pill to get their superpowers? Hmm. Sounds like the quintessential American superhero story!

That’s the premise behind PROJECT POWER (2020), a new superhero movie now available on Netflix.

In New Orleans, there’s this new pill on the streets that’s all the rage. Pop it and it gives you a superpower. Of course, like any drug, it can be dangerous, so for some folks, when they take it, they—- blow up!  Yikes! 

Police detective Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is busy on the streets of New Orleans trying to track down the main supplier of these super pills. He befriends a young dealer named Robin (Dominique Fishback) who’s doing this to pay the medical bills for her sick mother. Robin supplies Frank with information here and there, but nothing major.

Frank’s investigation is further compounded by men in suits who continually show up and shut the door on the local police, frustrating both Frank and his superior, Captain Craine (Courtney B. Vance). But then Craine shares a tip with Frank, that the men in suits are looking for a man named Art (Jamie Foxx) who they believe is the main supplier, and so Frank decides to find him first.

And Art is on the streets, but he’s not the main supplier. He is actually searching for his daughter, who was kidnapped by these strange scientist folks who are using her “special” DNA as part of their experiments developing this drug. On his search, Art crosses paths with Robin, and with Frank closing in, these three characters eventually come together  setting up the main confrontation with the film’s baddies.

PROJECT POWER has its moments, but not enough of them to lift this one to superior super hero status. The best part of this one is its cast.

Jamie Foxx is excellent as Art, the former soldier who’s out to take down the superpill cartel in order to rescue his daughter. He gets some good lines, has deadly charisma throughout, and looks believable taking down all the bad guys.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is equally as good as Frank, the cop who’s trying to do right by his city. Like Foxx, Gordon-Levitt gets a lot of good lines and also looks believable in the action scenes.

And Dominque Fishback shines as Robin in a very spirited performance.

All three of these performers deliver the goods and create some likeable characters, so even when the story isn’t firing on all cylinders, at the very least you get to enjoy these folks on screen.

The screenplay by Mattson Tomlin is okay. It’s really nothing we haven’t seen before. The super pill stuff is actually a bit confusing. On the one hand, characters speak of how it enhances the powers already inside the individuals taking it, but in the next breath, we see the scientists experimenting with animal and human DNA. Which one is it?

And like a lot of superhero movies, PROJECT POWER suffers from a lack of a villain. There isn’t one main bad guy here, and the few who appear in this film are sadly lacking in both villainous vision and charisma.

Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have this one looking good. It’s all slick and polished, but the action sequences rarely wow, and the fight scenes while commendable don’t really stand out.

PROJECT POWER is a mixed bag. I enjoyed the actors in this one immensely, and thought they created some very likable characters, but the story here never really takes off, nor do the action scenes do much to lift this one.

It doesn’t really compare to the films in the Marvel cinematic universe, although it is better than some of the awful DC films which have come out in the past few years. It also just doesn’t really have the feel of a superhero movie. It plays more like a police action/ science fiction tale.

At the end of the day, PROJECT POWER proves to be a mild diversion for those of us waiting for the day when theaters reopen and the major superhero releases return to the big screen.

—END—

 

 

 

HORSE GIRL (2020) – Intriguing Drama Asks: Mental Illness or Alien Abduction?

There’s a fine line between mental illness and alien abduction.

That’s the dance played out in HORSE GIRL (2020), an intriguing drama about a sweet yet socially awkward young woman who suffers from nightmares and blackouts which she interprets as alien abductions while those around her believe more matter-of-factly that she suffers from mental illness.

Just where the truth lies is something the movie doesn’t make crystal clear.

HORSE GIRL tells the story of Sarah (Alison Brie) a shy young woman who works in a fabric store during the day and comes home to her apartment at night where she spends her evenings alone watching reruns of her favorite science fiction TV show, while her roommate Nikki (Debby Ryan) occupies herself with her boyfriend Brian (Jake Picking). Sarah also has an affinity for a horse Willow which she visits every day at the stable, much to the annoyance of Willow’s owners. We learn later that Willow used to be Sarah’s horse but isn’t any more.

On her birthday, Sarah receives a birthday card from her co-worker Joan (Molly Shannon) who asks her if she has any special plans to celebrate, to which Sarah lies and says she’s going to go out to dinner with some friends from her dance class. Later, we witness the awkward scene where Sarah tries to make plans with these friends but fails miserably, so she returns to her apartment, content to spend her birthday alone, but her roommate Nikki feels bad for her and coaxes Brian to invite his friend Darren (John Reynolds) over who had recently broke up with his girlfriend. Surprisingly, Darren and Sarah hit it off well, and they agree to see each other again for a date.

Up until this point, HORSE GIRL has the makings of a tender romantic love story, but it’s at this time when Sarah realizes she’s been having some pretty bizarre dreams, dreams in which sleep walks and finds herself in other places, not knowing how she got there, and when she returns home, she finds that while she believes she’s been gone for hours, only minutes have passed in real-time.

She does some research on the internet and reads about alien abductions, and the descriptions of these abductions match things she has seen and felt in her dreams. It’s also at this time when she begins to think more about her grandmother and mother, both of whom dealt with mental health issues and spoke of experiences similar to hers. In her mom’s case, she recently committed suicide. But Sarah fixates on her grandmother, who in old photographs is the splitting image of Sarah, which gets Sarah thinking about clones.

Once Sarah starts speaking about this to her friends and family, it’s easy for them— and for the audience— to believe she has inherited the same mental health issues as her mother and grandmother. But Sarah is convinced otherwise, and she sets out to prove it.

HORSE GIRL is a thought-provoking movie that is well-written by director Jeff Baena and lead actress Alison Brie. And while its story is never fleshed out as well as one would hope, it still delivers in that it takes its audience for a ride that is compelling throughout, the only drawback being a conclusion that is a bit too open-ended.

I really enjoyed Alison Brie in the lead role as Sarah. She makes Sarah likeable and vulnerable. She nails the introvert persona suffering from social anxiety to a tee, and the scenes where she tries to be social are painfully realistic. And she does it without being cliché or superficial. In all other aspects of her life, in her job, for instance, she’s comfortable and quite good at it. So, Brie creates a three-dimensional character who we like even before all the weird things begin to happen to her, and once they do, we empathize with her and want her to be okay, even as it becomes increasingly apparent that she’s not okay.

Brie is a wonderful actress who I first noticed on the TV show MAD MEN (2007-2015) where she played Trudy Campbell. She also stars on the TV show GLOW (2017-2020). She’s in nearly every scene in HORSE GIRL, and she easily carries this film on her back.

And as I said, she also wrote the screenplay, along with director Jeff Baena. One of the best parts of the screenplay is how well-written the supporting characters are. They come off as real people, which in this story, is important, because Sarah increasingly becomes unstable, and if she were surrounded by a bunch of cardboard clichés, it would certainly make her story less believable. But that’s not the case here as these supporting characters have real reactions and really care for her.

In one of the film’s best sequences, when Sarah is on her date with Darren, it’s all going so well, and when Sarah opens up to him and starts talking about what she suspects is happening to her, at first since he’s happy and genuinely likes Sarah, he’s supportive and all ears. But as Sarah grows more intense and unpredictable and unrealistic, she becomes scary, and Darren’s reaction changes.  Had he been a cliché, the boyfriend only out for sex, for example, this scene would not have worked as well. Instead, it works wonderfully, because Darren tries so hard to  understand Sarah and to accept what she’s saying, but as she reacts more violently, he, like the audience, becomes unnerved and he has no choice but to react to that. It’s one of the more honest— and frightening— sequences in the film.

As I said, the one weakness in the movie is the ending. Based on the final sequence, you get a pretty good idea on which side the moviemakers favor here, mental illness or alien abduction, but still there’s something missing, and that something is an independent view on the matter. The film is told through Sarah’s eyes, and so even that final scene is from Sarah’s perspective, and hence you really don’t know its true meaning, which often is not a bad thing in a movie, and it’s not a terribly bad thing in this movie, as I still liked it a lot in spite of the ending, but a more emphatic ending would have helped, as it would have given this curious tale an exclamation point on which to end, rather than the way it ends now, with an ellipse.

HORSE GIRL also has an admirable supporting cast. Debby Ryan does a fine job as Sarah’s roommate Nikki, who although she gets frustrated with her does care about her. Likewise, Jake Picking is solid as Nikki’s boyfriend Brian, who’s much less supportive of Sarah and thinks she’s flat-out weird. Molly Shannon also does a nice job as Sarah’s co-worker Joan who also seems to care about her.

I really enjoyed John Reynolds as Darren, the guy who sincerely wants to start a relationship with Sarah, but he unfortunately picked the wrong week to ask her out. Reynolds does an awesome job making this guy a three-dimensional character, and he does it in very little screen time. Reynolds plays quirky Officer Callahan on TV’s STRANGER THINGS (2016-2020). He makes much more of an impact here in HORSE GIRL.

HORSE GIRL also benefits from a couple of screen veterans in the cast. Paul Reiser shows up in one sequence as Sarah’s step-father. It’s just one sequence, but it’s a good one. And John Ortiz plays a man Sarah sees in her recurring dreams, and then later she sees him in real life.

I liked the way director Jeff Baena handled this one. Sure, it’s a bit of a slow burn, as the pace is measured, and the first third is a straight drama. In fact, when Sarah experiences her first weird nightmare, it comes out of nowhere and is quite jarring. If HORSE GIRL were a horror movie, it would fall into the category of quiet horror. So, call this one a quiet mystery/thriller.

But it works.

HORSE GIRL is a captivating drama with sprinkles of mystery and science fiction thrown in that takes its time telling its weirdly provocative story, and while its ending isn’t completely satisfying, it remains a movie that creates a sympathetic main character who’s searching for answers about her past and her future. You’ll want her to find them.

It’s now available on Netflix.

—END—

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) – Frightening Re-Imagining of Classic Tale

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) is a clever and creative re-imagining of the Invisible Man tale, of both the classic Universal Invisible Man movies, and of H.G. Wells’ famous novel, on which all of these movies are based.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell changes the focus of the story and places it on a young woman Cecilia “Cece” Kass (Elisabeth Moss) who is trapped in an abusive relationship which only gets worse when her husband fakes his own death and makes himself invisible, giving him unlimited power to torment her relentlessly. It adds a whole new layer to the story and gives new meaning to “he said, she said,” since obviously no one believes her story.

My only question when all was said and done was why? Why go through all the trouble of faking your own death and making yourself invisible if your only goal was to torture your wife? The movie does give a reason for his motives, but it still doesn’t change the fact that this is an incredibly convoluted way of getting what he wants.

When THE INVISIBLE MAN opens, a frightened Cece escapes from her abusive husband Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and is whisked away to safety by her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer). Cece is so fearful of Adrian, that even when she is staying with Emily’s friend James (Aldis Hodge) who’s a cop, and his teenage daughter Sydney (Storm Reid) she can’t bring herself to step out of the house, terrified that her husband will find her.

But a short time later, the news breaks that Adrian committed suicide, which strikes Cece as odd since he was always in control, and taking his own life would be the last thing she’d expect him to do. Anyway, he leaves her a ton of money, and all seems well, until Cece begins to feel his presence around her, and then strange things begin to happen.

Cece becomes convinced that Adrian faked his own death and has found a way to become invisible. Of course, her story is completely unbelievable and makes her sound crazy, as if Adrian got inside her head and scarred her so badly that she’s now having delusions that he’s still alive. So, she sets out to prove she’s right, but before she can do so, there’s a vicious murder and when she is seen with the bloody knife in hand, her defense that it was an invisible man and not her, all but seals her fate.

I really liked this new version of THE INVISIBLE MAN. It’s smart and scary and provides a fresh new way of telling the story. The only thing I didn’t like, as I already said, is I thought the plot was a bit too contrived. Why a man would go to all this trouble to get what he ultimately wants is a head scratcher. There are far easier ways to get the same result.

Still, the screenplay by Leigh Whannell is a good one. Whannell, who wrote the SAW movies and the INSIDIOUS films, has written his most ambitious screenplay yet with THE INVISIBLE MAN. Making it a story about an abused wife living in horrific fear of her abuser husband adds an entirely different element to the tale and makes it that much scarier.

Speaking of which, that’s one of my favorite parts of THE INVISIBLE MAN, that the film is scary. While I’ve enjoyed Leigh Whannell’s screenplays, I did not enjoy his directorial debut with INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 (2015), the first film in the INSIDIOUS series that I didn’t really like. But he more than makes up for it here with THE INVISIBLE MAN.

I don’t get scared easily at the movies, but there are a couple of scenes in this one which made me jump. There’s a nice contrast between silence and noise here. When Cece senses something is wrong, it’s dead silent. She feels someone in the room with her but she can’t see him, and so she keeps perfectly still, relying on her other senses, hearing and smell, and so you have scenes that go from silence to terror, and they really work.

The underlying theme of the entire movie, the abused wife, keeps the audience unsettled throughout and enhances the traditional horror movie elements, which also work really well.

I wish the movie had played up the plot point of whether or not the invisible man is real, or is Cece just going psycho? I found this aspect of the story fascinating, but the film only flirts with this for a while before making it clear that yup, there’s an invisible guy on the loose.

I’ve been a fan of Elisabeth Moss since her days on MAD MEN (2007-15), and of course she now stars in THE HANDMAID’S TALE (2017-2020). She’s excellent here as the tormented Cece. The film is mostly about her, and Moss is convincing throughout. She does ask a question which also unfortunately remains unanswered, when she asks Adrian, “Why me?” He could have had any woman in the world. Why was he obsessed with her? The film doesn’t really provide an answer, which is one of the weaknesses of the movie.

The Invisible Man himself Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) isn’t developed at all. We know little about him. He just comes off as a jerk who happens to be a genius. In a way, this makes sense. Do we really want a back story for vicious wife abuser? Not really. But compared to Claude Rains in the original THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) who stole that movie with his crazed voice in spite of never being seen since he was invisible, Oliver Jackson-Cohen is barely a blip on the monster meter. Jackson-Cohen was much more memorable as troubled brother Luke on the Netflix series THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018-2020).

Strangely, more villainous here is Adrian’s brother Tom, played with weasel-like coldness by Michael Dorman.

It’s worth noting that Leigh Whannell kept the name Griffin for the Invisible Man, which hearkens back to H.G. Wells’ novel and the classic Universal Invisible Man movies of the 1930s and 1940s.

Aldis Hodge is excellent as police detective James Lanier, as is Harriet Dyer as Cece’s sister Emily. Storm Reid is also very good as James’ daughter Sydney.

The film also has a menacingly powerful music score by Benjamin Wallfisch, which really adds a lot to the tension in the story.

THE INVISIBLE MAN is a successful re-imagining of the Invisible Man story that adds layers and depth not present in previous tellings. That being said, it doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny, as it never convincingly makes its case for the reasons its main villain takes such a convoluted route to achieve his goal, but if you can look past this, you’ll enjoy this frightening new take on a classic science fiction horror tale.

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